βucharest Urban League of photographers for the Balkans

Athens has become a city full of loneliness. City’s dark side emerged slowly like being in a sickness period or mourning. Current era/stage of that evolution is still changing, or rather transformed into something else, more complex as a result of a continuous osmosis.

Today, however, Athens presents this mental landscape. It has the color of a permanent standby, but also trust that nothing can be as before. Perhaps in the future when this difficult period has elapsed, counting the time before and after the crisis, such as wars or famines.

This painting of the difficulty of the current situation is that it is the continuous depreciation and not the effect of an explosion. It has the characteristics of an insidious pass that goes life in other coordinates, initially uncertain, volatile, shallow and unbecoming.

Addiction and familiarity with the change of urban life and he is hypnotizing, follows the assumption that one is forced to do in front of the inevitable. It is a confession realism. But just in the condition of the assumption, urban loneliness, the loneliness of the passers and the belief that all of these are transient, give what we live currently the bitter feeling of moving to another era. (by Argyris Drolapas)

The main instrument which we take a photograph with, is our being, our state of mind, our memories, our culture and last but not least, our mental reaction to the world surrounding us.

And the world around us is changing fast and, unfortunately, instead of rising to higher spheres of compassion and solidarity, it is eating its children and ultimately itself.

And whether we want it or not, every photograph is a political statement made by the "political animal/ζῷον πoλιτικόν" which the photographer is by excellence (in doubting, but at the same time cementing, the society).

These extremely powerful images are not seeking pity or anger, they are just melancholic, sad, then full of hope, then sad again, then sad again in their joy, then restless in their capitulation, surrendering their souls only to the worthy and the brave, and never to the loathsome (photos by Gina Maragkoudaki)

"Faces came out of the confusion to him as he stood there, eyes met his and passed and vanished. Men gesticulated to him, shouted inaudible personal things. Most of the faces were flushed, but many were ghastly white. And disease was there, and many a hand that waved to him was gaunt and lean. Men and women of the new age! Strange and incredible meeting! As the broad stream passed before him to the right, tributary gangways from the remote uplands of the hall thrust downward in an incessant replacement of people; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The unison of the song was enriched and complicated by the massive echoes of arches and passages. Men and women mingled in the ranks; tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp. The whole world seemed marching. Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp; his brain was tramping. The garments waved onward, the faces poured by more abundantly."From the (1910) dystopian science fiction novel "When the sleeper wakes" by H. G. Wells - Chapter IX.-The people march. Quoted by Andreas Neophytou